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If you’ve been following my story, you’ll know that in late 2017, I started asking questions to try and gather more information about my birth father and my ancestry. It started with a yearly checkup at the doctor’s office and a questionnaire I had to fill out about family history. Literally more than half of it was left blank because I simply didn’t know how to answer. I know it might not seem like a … Read the rest

It’s been over a month since I shared with you that I am on a journey—a journey to recover the lost pieces of myself; to find a solid footing in the roots of my ancestors; to take back the story that was stolen from me by an absent father and a buried heritage.

It’s been three weeks since I dropped my DNA collection kit in the mail, sending it off to a … Read the rest

It is 12:55 am on a cold Canadian winter’s night. My mother has labored long, but I have gotten myself stuck in her birth canal, hesitant, I suppose, to come out and greet the world. She births me through a slit in her abdomen, just as her mother before birthed her, and I, thirty-two years later, will birth my own son. The women in my family give life through our stomachs, it … Read the rest

my first name, elena, means light, or the bright one.it appears my parents knew from my birth that i was made to shine in the dark places.

born to an italian father and a scottish mother, i was given two middle names, each to mark a distinct piece of my heritage.teresa, from my father’s side; it means summer harvester.ann, from my mother’s. ann means full of grace.